MJackson.Wbst@PARC-MAXC.ARPA@sri-unix.UUCP (07/27/83)
Food for thought: Date: 26 Jul 83 12:05:02 PDT (Tuesday) From: McCullough.PA Subject: The military and AI To: antiwar^ From "The Race to Build a Supercomputer" in Newsweek, July 4, 1983... [Robert Kahn, mentioned below, is DARPA's computer director] 'Once they are in place, these technlogies will make possible an astonishing new breed of weapons and military hardware. Smart robot weapons--drone aircraft, unmanned submarines and land vehicles--that combine aritificial intelligence and high-powered computing can be sent off to do jobs that now involve human risk. "This is a sexy area to the military, because you can imagine all kinds of neat, interesting things you could send off on their own little missions around the world or even in local combat," says Kahn. The Pentagon will also use the technologies to create artificial-intelligence machines that can be used as battlefield advisers and superintelligent computers to coordinate complex weapons systems. An intelligent missile-guidance system would have to bring together different technologies--real-time signal processing, numerical calculations and symbolic processing, all at unimaginably high speeds--in order to make decisions and give advice to human commanders.'